Oil price: no sign of falling below $100

 

Oil price over $100 to stay
Despite the crude build in the US, consistently confirmed by two reports in the past two days, the price of crude oil shows no sign of losing momentum in its upward trend.

Both API, American Petroleum Institute, and the EIA, US Energy Information Administration, released data that shows a crude build during the past week. 

The API estimated a crude build of 2.167 million barrels; on Tuesday, however, the actual build turned out to be 4.78 million barrels - a significant statistic.  

The figures from the EIA, meanwhile, depicts the same picture, but not as large as that of the API.

The crude build of this magnitude did surprise the analysts; because, data for last week, based on the data from the previous week, there was a considerable crude draw.

Although some analysts anticipate what they call, a demand destruction, due to high oil and gas prices, they could not account for the crude draw that we witnessed last week.

In China, the world's second largest consumer, meanwhile, there is a serious outbreak of Covid-19 and the Chinese are determined to leave nothing to chance; they are hell bent on maintaining highly ambitious zero-Covid-19-policy, despite some of the measures taken being too harsh.

Some analysts believe that the Chinese factor is instrumental in inducing caution among investors that played its part in building the US crude draw. 

 

 


Both China and India keep cashing in on Russian oil at the expense of the diplomatic niceties with the West; they show no sign of reversing their policies in spite of the mounting pressure.

In another development, Russia finally cut off gases for two countries in Europe - Poland and Bulgaria - citing not compilation with its demand to paid in rouble; the move has the potential to create a discord among the members of the EU when they can least afford to lose the unity.

The potential loss of Russian gas is no longer in the hypothetical realm and it has push up the gas prices.

For instance, Poland demanded on Thursday that the EU takes measures against the countries in the EU who took heed of Russian demand to pay in rouble for oil and gas; the former took a swipe at Hungary and Germany.

High crude oil price



The high energy prices are causing significant headwinds against the global growth with the inflation running so high. The Western leader appeared to be at the end of their tether, when it comes to coming up with solutions to the problem.

They failed to address the issue even before the war broke out between Russia and Ukraine while putting oil producers under tremendous pressure. 

In this context, how they are going to achieve the same goal when the countries in question are at war is anybody's guess.






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